It's a disgrace that the Queen had to pay obeisance to the City, when it has got her nation into such an unholy economic mess

My invitation for today's Jubilee Thanksgiving Service at St Paul's
Cathedral must have been lost in the post. But the little I saw of it
seemed to confirm that St Paul's duly did what it's best at: Marching
about in fancy clothes with poles in the air.

I see now why they
were so anxious to get the Occupy protest camp's tents off its steps. I
spotted one face in the cathedral home team who had enthusiastically, if
jocularly, endorsed a suggestion that flamethrowers be used to remove
Her Majesty's subjects from their camp last autumn. There were those at
the time who said that Jesus would have been among the campers. Today,
appropriately enough, The Reverend Canon Flamethrower looked about as
far from the Nazarene of Galilee as it's possible to get.

The Queen waves at well-wishers with the Very Reverend David Ison, Dean of St Paul's as she leaves the cathedral after the service

It's a
shame that the Queen had to go to the City, which has got her nation
into such an unholy economic mess. The Jubilee weekend celebrations so
far have been altogether less about Britain's finance oligarchy. The
Queen has done what she does best - face the jubilation and gratitude of
her people.

It would be a particularly gruesome sort of
republican who rejoiced in it raining on her parade on the Thames on
Sunday, which was a splendid public occasion. And last night's gig in
the Mall, with the usual array of alternative old queens, from Dame
Shirley Bassey to Sir Elton John, was thronged with her happy,
flag-waving subjects, endorsing the fact that she reigns principally by public
consent.

But today she had to pay her obeisance to the
money-baggers who pay for it all, or some of it (though not invariably
through their taxes). It was, frankly, a disgrace that Her Majesty had
to leave St Paul's and be taken to a reception hosted by the Corporation
of the City of London around the corner at Mansion House.

The
Corporation makes the Royal Family look like a model of transparency and
accountability. It is medieval in its self-serving power structures, a
local authority accountable to no-one but itself, a block-voted
plutocracy that is little more than a real-estate gravy train for its
own bloated members, whose temples to Mammon sneer at the poverty of
neighbouring boroughs such as Tower Hamlets.

It insults the Queen
that she had to share canapes and Bucks Fizz with the fat necks and
dandruff-shoulders of the City of London, the white, middle-class and
male bankers, insurers and property magnates who have transferred the
savings of the poor into the pockets of the rich with such arrogant
chutzpah. I imagine that at least some of them should not have been
hobnobbing with the Queen so much as doing time at Her Majesty's
Pleasure.

It must have been a relief for her to reach the Palace
of Westminster for lunch, where gardeners and other ordinary workers
awaited her. That's been a much more representative image of this
weekend - diverse, inclusive, generous, popular, kind and honest.
Everything, in fact, that the City of London isn't.